Black Hawk Hancock received his BA in English and Philosophy from the University of California Berkeley, and his MA (Sociology) and PhD (Sociology) from the University of Wisconsin Madison. His research and teaching interests, are just as influenced by Cultural Studies, Continental Philosophy, and Literary Theory, as they are by Sociology, and run the gamut from race, ethnicity, and culture, to biopolitics, climate change, and immigration/migration.
He is the author of Lindy Hop and the Racial Imagination (Chicago 2013), co-author, with Roberta Garner of Changing Theories: New Directions in Social Theory (Toronto 2009), and World Disrupted: Sociology of the Future (Routledge forthcoming).
His work has appeared in a wide range of academic journals, including The American Sociologist, Ethnography, The History of Human Sciences, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior, and Sociological Perspectives, amongst others.
From 2019-2022, he served as Co-Editor of Sociological Perspectives.
Research Interests:
- Sociology of Culture
- Sociology of Knowledge
- Social Theory
- Historical Sociology
- Ethnographic Methods
Teaching Interests
- Sociology of Culture
- Mass Media
- Philosophy and Social Thought
- Climate Change
Recent Publications:
Hancock, Black Hawk and Roberta Garner. "Goffman and Criminology" Sociology Companion Series on Great Sociological Thinkers: Erving Goffman. Michael Haviid Jacobsen (ed.) Anthem Press. Forthcoming.
2020-2023 Hancock, Black Hawk and Bryan L. Sykes (Eds.) Sociological Perspectives, Volumes 63-65.
2021 Hancock, Black Hawk and Roberta Garner. “Erving Goffman and 'The New Normal': Havoc and Containment in the Pandemic Era," The American Sociologist 52(3): 548-578.
2018 Hancock, Black Hawk and Roberta Garner. “Reintegrating Theories, Methods, and Historical Analysis in Teaching Sociology.” The American Sociologist 49: 36-391.
2018 Hancock, Black Hawk and Daniel R. Morrison. “The Ethnographer's Circle: Institutionalizing Ethnography in the Pacific Sociological Association.” Sociological Perspectives 61(2): 195-206.
2018 Hancock, Black Hawk, Bryan Sykes, and Anjuli Verma. “The Problem of "Cameo Appearances" in Mixed-Methods Research: Implications for 21st-Century Ethnography." Sociological Perspectives 61(2): 314-335.